The article has quite a few golden nuggets; I want to surface a couple of those below (paraphrasing)

Audience and Influence are two different things.

As in many other things influence is not new; what is new is the virtual elimination of friction: tons of data about millions and millions of people influencing and being influenced by each other is readily available (or becoming readily available) for business to use / apply.

The richness of the data set that can potentially be used to "calculate influence" is increasing all the time: channels (i..e Facebook, Twitter, etc.), frequency, recency, domain area, what kind of reaction it generated, tone/feeling, how quick and how long, Context, Call to Action Impact, etc.

Just like in the past tools were developed to leverage "Life Time Value" scores to provide differentiated service levels today we have (and is an ongoing process) tools being developed to leverage "Network Value" at different customer interaction points: service calls, audience selection for campaigns, etc.